In this tutorial, we will show you how to install VirtualBox on your Debian 9 Stretch. For those of you who didn’t know, VirtualBox is a program that allows you to install an operating system without changing your computer’s main operating system. This software allows you to create and run guest operating systems (“virtual machines”) such as Linux and Windows on top of the host operating system.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of VirtualBox on a Debian 9 (Stretch) server.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian 9 (Stretch).
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
- A
non-root sudo useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install VirtualBox on Debian 9 Stretch
Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal:
apt-get update apt-get upgrade
Step 2. Installing VirtualBox on Debian 9.
First, Add the VirtualBox repository:
sudo apt-add-repository 'deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian stretch contrib'
Next, we need to download and import the Oracle GPG public key to Debian 9 system with the following command:
curl -O https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc sudo apt-key add oracle_vbox_2016.asc
Install the VirtualBox 5, command as follows:
apt-get update apt-get install virtualbox-5.1
Step 4. Accessing VirtualBox.
Once it’s installed, start it from your application menu, or run the command below to start VirtualBox from the terminal:
virtualbox
Congratulations! You have successfully installed VirtualBox. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing VirtualBox on Debian 9 (Stretch) server. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official VirtualBox website.